A Mist of Grit and Splinters

by Graydon Saunders

  “The emergency of our existence is nine years old. Enemies arrive as they come, children are born as swiftly as they are. We need not consider to alter what we may not alter.” The Galdor-gesith taps gently on a folder of papers beside them.

  “You’re thinking we’re compelled.” The Peace-gesith does not entirely remove caution from their tone.

  “When you decide you want to live — ” the Lug-gesith says, and stops. “The future don’t negotiate.”

  There’s a pause that stretches, yawns, and shakes out each individual foot before coiling back in on itself.

  “Granted,” the Peace-gesith says.

  The Line-gesith’s sober dignity dissolves into glee. “Le jour de gloire! The books and the officers both tell me glory does not arise from death, nor victory, nor the Peace maintained. It is in the surety that the Peace shall be maintained the next time invaders must be destroyed in which glory might reside.” Their whole body moves into an elaborate posture of “What can be done?”

  “Our comrade the Geld-gesith has been clear that they wish chiefly to know what must be paid for.” The Galdor-gesith taps their papers again, once and lightly. “We owe them frugality in the ‘musts’ where we can find it.”

  “Comrade.” The Peace-gesith stops four times before they find words again. “Do you not fear that we risk the rule of sorcerers?”

  “I inherited in the files of my office several questions from diverse sources, asking if Blossom, Fire’s Team, Halt, or some combination could take over the Shape. These started to arise after Parliament’s examination of Shadow, and have continued to arrive. I asked the Maintainer; Ongen recalled to me that there was concern on this point in the First Commonweal, and that it had not been firmly resolved by the middle of the fourth century, when such questions faded out of the forefront of public concern. The Independent Ongen’s own attested statement asserts that those entities certainly could. The only substantive question from Ongen’s perspective is if this could be done secretly.”

  All the other gesiths nod. This is only officially news.

  “The Independent Blossom attests that a secret takeover is not possible. Detail being requested, Blossom explained that the Independent Lim designed the Second Shape of Peace that way, and that Lim has better than a four-century head start. If there’s a way around it, Blossom can’t perceive one and hasn’t particularly been looking.”

  Two of the other three gesiths set down pens or notepads. The Peace-gesith’s eyes close.

  “The Independent Halt attests that the utility of the Commonweal arises from its character as a thing which a sorcerer may not control. Asserting control makes the Commonweal useless to Halt.”

  “What was it?” The Lug-gesith sounds honestly curious. Every time Halt attests, something manifests.

  “Pea plants.” The Galdor-gesith is entirely matter-of-fact.

  “Pea plants?” The Line-gesith finds this implausibly benign. Something that looked like pea-plants, and bound your living breath to the bones of your ancestors, that would be more the expected thing.

  “Halt called Rose. The plants were taken away to be kept in a greenhouse and studied.”

  “So we must believe them.” The Peace-gesith does not sound pleased.

  “It works or it doesn’t,” the Lug-gesith says, voice deeper than its deep usual.

  “If we are to keep the Peace, we shall not keep our habitual economy.” The Galdor-gesith has stayed matter-of-fact. “There are not enough of us, were we not beset by enemies. There will be more wreaking-teams, more focus-tools, more dynamic focuses between groups of independents. I do not see how this might be avoided.”

  “Granted,” the Peace-gesith says. “There is risk of discord or dearth in this, not rule.” The Peace-gesith makes a sort of compact reaching-for-a-pen motion, narrowly with one hand. Among the Commonweal’s judges it is understood to indicate decision. “These are near enough to things of settled law.”

  “No settled skill,” the Lug-gesith says.

  “If we are to keep the Peace,” the Galdor-gesith says, “we must maintain the borders.”

  “‘Maintain’ is full of details,” the Line-gesith says. “I have not enjoyed my education.”

  Everyone here has seen the report of General Chert to Parliament; insufficient forces for optimistic understandings of unknown threats.

  “Specific production,” the Lug-gesith says. Not like a curse; in the character of an unwelcome diagnosis.

  The Galdor-gesith nods. “Artillery might work. There’s no civil use, no civil production, and creating that production through customary means exceeds the available surplus.” The Old Line has an artillery foundry, run by the Line, rather than the Line-gesith, just as the Old Line has in the First Commonweal mill-works to make armour. The arrangement requires collectives already skilled and regularly available to make such things operate.

  It is a matter of much-reviewed inescapable numbers. It takes the Peace-gesith more than a minute to nod, all the same, before they say “We may not prefer luck.”

  Parliament has been clear that the customary form of the economy is to be considered expendable.

  “If we do not prefer luck — ” and the Galdor-gesith stops. There has to be a place to put the effort to discover how to use a dynamic focus industrially. To apportion divisions of labour among wreaking teams, to produce something that is an ongoing economic association between collectives in the way that collectives have teams.

  “Warrants of authority and commission for Fire’s Team have been requested.” The Line-gesith’s voice has gone abstract. “Service to the Line would provide a customary possibility.”

  The Peace-gesith turns their head to look specifically at the Line-gesith, head tipping down.

  “I mention this,” the Line-gesith says, “to remove it. Consensus of the Standard-Captains has not been achieved on this point.” The Line-gesith makes a compressed, twisting gesture meant to convey a compound intractability. “General Chert described it as ‘contentious’.”

  “This is an enormous risk.” The Peace-gesith’s voice for factual annotations.

  “Reason to put the armoury somewhere people do not now live,” the Galdor-gesith says. “Reason to seek the greatest return of capability we may have for the risk and resources.”

  “That risk is not my chief concern,” the Peace-gesith says. “Precedent established in law may be found in error, and reversed by Parliament. Time put to unproductive ends is not reversible.”

  “Neither’s death,” the Lug-gesith says. “The list starts with ‘abrasives’ and it’s not getting shorter.” Their off-hand forms a fist and swipes outwards. Safely far from anyone, but the gesture has force. “More work to do than we’re doing, or can do.”

  “Have you considered where these things arise?” The Peace-gesith’s voice has gone flat, instead of impassive. “Arts at one remove or two do not lose the nature of their source.”

  “Artillery as we have it arises from the Independent Blossom and those they have taught,” the Galdor-gesith says, “and there is concern that the Independent Blossom is also the Goddess of Destruction.”

  The Peace- and Line- gesiths nod.

  “The whole of this Commonweal is in contact with Blossom; we made them a Keeper of the Shape of Peace, out of our own fear.” The Galdor-gesith shrugs. “The Commonweal is always being destroyed. Every second that passes sees what was destroyed; the Commonweal we create in this second is not what it was in the second past. What Blossom destroys,” and the Galdor-gesith pauses, voice taking up a remembrance of gentleness, “tends to be some former time’s helplessnesses.”

  “Change enough’ll cost collectives,” the Lug-gesith says. “Sea People again this year, more and angrier? None of you’ll tell me we’ve got enough. There’s stuff needs get done prompt.”

  “Any time you require perfection … ” and the Line-gesith’s voice trails off. The proverb ends differently in different regions of what was the single Com
monweal. Generations of teachers have tried to remove the Kingdom of the Spider’s ‘you have failed’ and the Empire of the Ants’ ‘you are doing evil’ from the reflexive vocabulary; the clerkly version goes ‘you must stop and start over’.

  In the Creeks, they say “need perfect, get rot” and do not mean the necessary processes of returning the matter of dead things to the circulation of life.

  “Let them have their fun.”

  There’s a quick nod, and a slow nod, and one clearly willed by intellect’s conviction, but there are three, and the meeting moves on.

  D-Day Minus 1446

  Year of Peace 543, Messidor, Twenty-seventh Day (Early Summer)

  The Shape of Peace

  The clearances of Lost Creek count southward from the Western East-West Canal.

  Lost Creek’s remnants seem to curve toward and then away from the West Wetcreek, picking up more easting each time. The remnant only gets so far; wherever Lost Creek met the Edge is not preserved. Debate exists if there was an Edge, then. The West Wetcreek surely was not; Split Creek was not, when Lost Creek drained what would become the Province of Westcreek. Wherever Lost Creek might have gone, Split Creek angles away from its last curve into Awkward Lake and no one wants to go surveying there to look for remnant geology.

  Parliament agreed that a larhaus might exist on the 8th of Brumaire in the Year of the Peace Established Five Hundred and Forty. No larhaus land-tenure was created, nor was any structure built; it was seen as sufficient to arrange the accounting and to consider what would present the best use of land.

  Parliament had meant for there to be a larhaus of the Galdor-gesith; the idea that the Line-gesith could want one, whatever anyone might have thought, had gone entirely unvoiced. No one was entirely comfortable with creating work or exchange outside the civil economy, but when the sufficiently mighty came in groups it could not be avoided.

  Today, there’s a team of independents. They have a formal authorization from the Galdor-gesith. They have equally formal requests from the Galdor-gesith, concerning a larhaus, and from the Line- and Lug-gesiths, concerning an armoury.

  The independents have made new landscape in the First Clearance. Terraced and wooded and drained by a single stream ending in a water-gate fifty metres across, all of this had been extensively planned against the arrival of the formal permission today now given. The gate looks like glass and shows less under the water, its shallow convex curve smooth and dark as a galaxy’s dreams of spinning.

  Another day and they have made new landscape in the Second Clearance, broad and marshy and wide. The water from the First Clearance drains here into several gates. The streams braid and the reeds are tall and the ducks, flame-breathéd and flightless, quibble to one another with deep sounds like someone put feathers over growing hunger.

  The next will be the Third Clearance; the Third Clearance, where the Line-gesith’s larhaus goes, that it is agreed will be called an armoury. No one is agreed on what to call the Galdor-gesith’s larhaus, but that can wait.

  Full-Captain Crinoline, senior in the operational area and too polite to confuse that with the Wapentake, said “At least enough”; the Captain, more familiar with the team of independents, said “As much future as will fit.”

  The team of independents heard the unsaid ‘in the time allotted’ and understood the intended several futures. The Captain is terse, but consistent.

  The Third Clearance will be endorheic. Crossing the last curve of Split Creek, increasing the flow of the West Wetcreek, or trying to integrate new outflow into the Southern Edge all present long-term challenges, and the point of giving the job to this specific team of independents was speed.

  On the twenty-ninth day of Messidor, the Third Clearance of Lost Creek becomes an igneous province, as it was not before. The rock is mostly cochromite, and cubic kilometres of that mineral are not probable. The top layer is dark tourmalines and augite to a depth between fifty and a hundred metres. That will produce comprehensible soils and makes practical finding an excuse for the cliff-sided gulf the independents intend to fill with water. It would have had to have been a surpassing strange sideways volcanic eruption a billion years ago on some less plausible world, but the lake will be deep and steep and smooth as glass up its shore-cliffs.

  On the thirtieth day of Messidor a canal tunnel slides through the newly ancient igneous hills to the south and east. The lake-shape curves like a bean, itself following the eastern outlines of the new igneous province, a careful kilometre away from Split Creek. The western edge is nearly north-south, replicating the topography of the West WetCreek’s eastern bank to a few kilometres back. Erosion will make it different in time, gnawing quicker on the sedimentary incumbent rocks, but erosion is slow. No one will need to change the ditches around their thorpe this year, or next, or in the next twenty. The canal tunnel starts just at the point where the lake shore starts to run east-west before it will start, closer to the West Wetcreek, curving back around to eventually run north-east. For now, its entrance hangs in the air.

  Along the far side of the hills, at the point most distant from Split Creek’s last major curve to start running east-west toward Awkward Lake, on the first day of Thermidor a stretch of steep hillside goes sheer and glassy with realized abstractions of ‘sheer’ and ‘impassible’ and ‘obdurate’. Above the new cliffs of art, a building forms three stories behind an outer wall. The building wall is more sorcery than substance; perhaps not enough, should any of the Shot Shop’s more energetic products go awry, but the wall will try.

  On the second day of Thermidor, a kilometre inside the lake’s northern westernmost curve, what looks like a flat of land rises, sharply regular in outline.

  On the third day of Thermidor, nothing visible happens. Someone somehow in a position to observe might have seen a succession of illusory lines scribing across the risen platform.

  The ramparts of a fortress rise on the fourth day of Thermidor as tight clusters of hexagonal towers, black-walled and eerie despite roofs covered in a thousand colours of metallic tile. The curtain wall might be a continuation of the flat of land; it shows no seam, and if there is substance, there is sorcery, too. Everywhere in the Four Provinces of the Creeks and over the Fifth Range of the Folded Hills into the Fourth Valley, anyone with an exercised talent for the Power feels their teeth itch or one or another single finger grow cold.

  On the fifth day of Thermidor, a canal bridge leaves the fortress and runs west six level kilometres. The line of shrinking arches ends in a stair of locks, down over the ridge-line above the watershed of the West Wetcreek. The canal, sized for river barges, keeps going, to end at the West Wetcreek in a long landing place more elaborate than a single sheer bank.

  On the sixth day of Thermidor the water-gates from the Second Clearance activate, and water pours from the sides of the risen flat of land. Cubic kilometres of water come from somewhere, and the lake fills, as it could not this year or next given only the drainage.

  Some time near sunset on the sixth day, the team of independents informs a fylstan of the Line-gesith, waiting with two full barges at the landing place along the West Wetcreek, that the Creeks armoury is ready for occupancy.

  D-Day Minus 1384

  Year of Peace 543, Fructidor, Twenty-ninth Day (Late Summer)

  The Shape of Peace

  If this was an established meeting room in a dedicated facility specific to a particular gesith, rather than two linked rooms in Professions House in Lockport on Blue Creek, there would be a plaque with words, somewhere.

  The neat script on the card above the chalk board at the head of the room says “Process is outcome”, and on the next line “Exchange creates value.” This is a joint meeting between the clerks of the Lug- and Geld-gesiths, with some Line-gesith clerks in attendance.

  “Does an armoury work like a gean or a collective?” has been written neatly on a card since the 20th day of Messidor. This is the fourth card; repeated pinning attendant on being moved has been managed, as
an errant chalk-brush, falling into a puddle, and being torn into tiny pieces with rhetorical intent but real feeling were not.

  As a matter of established law and custom, your gean provides services; the majority of your income goes to your gean to address your material needs. A gean will invest: in collectives, and in the buildings collectives need to house their work. A gean may hold civil land-tenure, as individuals and collectives may not.

  A larhaus ought to work something like a thorpe; a larhaus was imagined to be like a thorpe. A thorpe is like a gean, but holding productive land tenure, distributed as thorpe-shares, which are the land-holding, and dwelling-rights, which work entirely like a gean. You can have dwelling-right without a thorpe-share, but not a thorpe-share without a dwelling-right. This is a compromise, worked out near the end of the Turbulent Century, from an initial belief that there should be no productive land-tenure — individual holdings of agricultural land — whatsoever. That could not be made to work, and the necessity of functioning agriculture had altered the ideals of the early Commonweal.

  A thorpe supports itself through the sale of agricultural products; there may be collectives housed at the thorpe, and they might even be manufacturing collectives, rather than collectives providing expert agricultural labour, but the thorpe itself is engaged in farming, rather than all the other kinds of economic activity engaged in by gean-members.

  All these matters have centuries of law and precedent and custom defining them; the sequence of contracts by which a gean purchases varying amounts of potato futures from a group of thorpes, funding some of the labour of weeding and planting in return for a specified mass of known-quality potatoes at harvest-time, is not simple, but it’s well established. The law and custom are entirely settled these several centuries. Accountant qualification tests avoid such examples because it is so difficult to provide meaningful questions. Everyone with any interest in the subject knows how it works. Even the regulations constraining thorpe external investments offer little challenge.